692. To these points I will add the following memorable occurrences.

The first memorable occurrence. As I returned home from the wisdom games [48], I saw an angel in a blue robe along the way.

He came up and walked alongside me, and said, "I see that you have just left the wisdom games, and you are happy because of what you heard there. I sense that you are not fully in this world, though, because you are still in the physical world at the same time. Therefore you will not be aware of our Olympic halls, where the ancient philosophers gather to determine from people newly arriving from your world what changes and developments wisdom has gone through and is going through now. If you wish, I will take you to the area where many of the ancient philosophers and their 'children' (meaning followers) live. "

He took me to the border between the south and the east. From some high ground there I gained a view of where we were going. To my surprise I saw a city. To one side of it there were two hills; the hill nearer the city was not as high as the other.

He said to me, "This city is called New Athens; the smaller hill is New Parnassus, and the larger is New Helicon. These are their names because the sages of ancient Greece stay here in the city and around it - Pythagoras, Socrates, Aristippus, Xenophon, and their followers and new recruits. "

I asked about Plato and Aristotle.

"They and their adherents live in another region," he said, "because their teachings were rational in nature and were focused more on the intellect, whereas the teachings of the philosophers here were moral in nature and were focused more on life. "

[2] He added that delegations of scholars from New Athens are frequently sent out to well-educated Christians to learn what people are thinking these days about God, the creation of the universe, the immortality of the soul, how a human being compares with an animal, and other topics that relate to inner wisdom.

"Just today a spokesperson announced a gathering," he said, "and indicated that our delegates had come across some people newly arrived from earth who told them some strange and interesting things. "

We saw many people coming out of the city and the surrounding areas. Some had laurels on their heads; some were carrying palm fronds in their hands; some were carrying books under their arms; some had pens tucked behind their left ears.

[3] We joined in with them and together we all climbed the hill. There on the top of the hill we came to a magnificent octagonal building, which they called the Palladium. We went inside. There we saw eight hexagonal alcoves. Each alcove contained bookcases and a table. The people who were wearing laurel wreaths were seated at these tables. In the main area of the Palladium there were carved stone benches; all the other people were seated on these.

A door opened to the left and the two people who had recently arrived from the earth were announced, brought in, and greeted. Then one of the people wearing laurel asked them, "What are the latest developments on earth [in regard to wisdom]?"

"One new development," they said, "is that people that are like animals, or animals that are like people, were found in the woods. Their faces and bodies indicated that they had been born human, but they had been lost or left in the woods at the age of two or three. The people who reported this said that these feral children were unable to make noises that reflected thinking in any way; and even once found, they never learned to articulate sound into a single word of language. Unlike animals, they did not know what foods were suitable for them to eat, but put whatever they found in the woods into their mouths, whether it was clean or unclean; and there was more information like that.

"From this evidence, some of the scholars among us made conjectures and others drew numerous conclusions concerning how a human being compares with an animal. "

[4] Some of the ancient philosophers asked what the conjectures and conclusions were.

"There were many of them," the two new arrivals said, "but they could all be boiled down to the following points.

"(1) Human beings by nature and by birth are stupider than any animal and are the lowliest of creatures. Without instruction that is what they remain as they grow up.

"(2) Human beings are capable of being instructed because they learn to make articulate sounds and to speak. By doing so they begin to reveal their thoughts. They do this progressively more and more until they are able to express the laws of society, although animals instinctively know many of these laws the day they are born.

"(3) Animals and human beings are equally rational.

"(4) If animals were able to speak, they would reason as skillfully as people on every topic. An indication of this is that animals think with just as much reason and prudence as people do.

"(5) Understanding is just a matter of variations of light from the sun, with the help of heat, as it passes through the ether. Therefore it is just an activity of our inner nature. It is capable of being raised up to the point where it becomes manifest as wisdom.

"(6) Therefore it is meaningless to believe that we live on after death any more than an animal does - except that for a few days after death some mist that looks like a ghost might be able to appear from the life that is leaving the body before it dissipates into nature, much the way a plant that has been resuscitated from its ashes appears in much the same form as it had had before.

"(7) Therefore religion, which teaches life after death, is a fiction to keep commoners on an internal leash through the laws of religion, just as they are kept on an external leash by the laws of the state. "

They added that those who are merely clever hold these opinions, but not those who are truly intelligent. When asked what the truly intelligent think, they answered that they had not actually heard, but they imagine that it must be different from this.

[5] Upon hearing this, all who were sitting at the tables said, "Oh, what sort of phase are the people on earth going through now? What reversal of fortune has wisdom undergone now? Has it turned into mindless fabrications? The sun has set. It has sunk beneath the earth to some point opposite the midday height where it should be.

"Surely everyone can know, based on the evidence of these people who have been abandoned and then found in the woods, that this is what people who have never been taught are like.

"Are we not what we have been taught to be? Are we not born in greater ignorance than the animals? Walking and talking are things we have to learn. If we do not learn to walk, will we ever stand up on our feet? If we do not learn to speak, will anything in our thinking ever change?

"Are we not all what we have been taught to be? If we have been taught falsities, then we are insane; if we have been taught truths, then we are wise. Nevertheless, those who have been driven insane by falsities are completely taken with the fantasy that they are wiser than those who have become wise through learning truths. Are there not idiotic and insane people who are no more human than the feral children found in the woods? Is it not true that people who have no memory are also much like feral children?

[6] "The conclusion we draw from all this is that without instruction people are not human, but they are not animals either. They are forms that have the capacity to receive and take in that which makes us human. Therefore we are not born human; we become human. The form in which we are born is that of an organism for receiving life from God, for the purpose of being an entity into which God can bring all that is good and, through union with him, make that entity blissfully happy forever.

"From what you just told us we perceive that wisdom has either died or become so ridiculous that people know absolutely nothing about how the life that is in a human being compares to the life that is in an animal. As a result, people know nothing about the state of human life after death.

"The people who are in a position to know this but do not want to know it and who therefore deny it - as many from among you Christians do - are much like those who were found in the woods. The people found in the woods, however, were stupid only because they lacked instruction; these scholars have made themselves just as stupid through believing in the mistaken impressions they get from their own senses - impressions that cast darkness over truths. "

[7] Then someone who was holding a palm branch stood up in the middle of the Palladium and said [to the sages], "Would you be so kind as to unravel a mystery? How is it that a human being, who was created as a form of God, can be changed into a form of the Devil? I know that the angels of heaven are forms of God and the angels of hell are forms of the Devil, and these two forms are opposite to each other. The latter are forms of insanity; the former are forms of wisdom. Would you tell us, therefore, how people who have been created as forms of God could possibly cross over from the light of day into a night so dark that they deny the existence of God and eternal life?"

One after the other in sequence, the teachers gave replies to this: first the Pythagoreans, then the Socratics, and afterward the rest. Among them there was one Platonist; he spoke last, and his opinion carried the day. It was as follows.

"In the Saturnian or Golden Age, people knew and acknowledged that they were forms for receiving life from God. As a result, wisdom was engraved on their souls and hearts. They saw what was true in the light of truth. Truths also allowed them to identify a good course of action by the sense of love and delight they felt in taking it.

"In the ages that followed, however, the human race stepped back from acknowledging that all the truth of wisdom and all the goodness of love within them was flowing in continually from God. As a result, they stopped being dwelling places for God. Their speaking with God and their association with angels came to an end, because the inner parts of their mind turned from the direction in which they had been facing. Their minds had been turned upward by God toward God, but now they bent down more and more in another direction, outward toward the world. At that stage they were turned by God toward God but through the world. Later their minds turned upside down to face in the opposite direction, downward toward themselves. Because people cannot see God when they are inwardly upside down and turned away, they separated themselves from God and became forms of hell, or forms of the Devil.

[8] "It follows from this that in the first ages, people acknowledged with all their heart and soul that any goodness or love and any truth or wisdom they possessed came from God and were actually God's qualities within themselves. They saw themselves as nothing more than vessels to receive life from God. Therefore they were called images of God, children of God, and those who are born of God.

"In the subsequent ages, however, people no longer acknowledged this with all their heart and soul. They acknowledged it at first because someone convinced them to believe it; then because it was traditional to believe it. Eventually it became just a matter of empty words. Making an acknowledgment like this with words alone is no acknowledgment at all; in fact, it is a denial at heart.

"From this we can see what wisdom is like among Christians on earth today, who no longer know the difference between people and animals. (But they could have drawn inspiration from God through the written revelation they have.) Many Christians believe that if people live on after death, then animals do too; or else if animals do not live on after death, neither do people.

"Surely, then, the spiritual light we have, which enlightens the sight of the mind, has become a darkness to them; whereas the earthly light they have, which enlightens only the sight of the body, seems to them to shine brightly. "

[9] After this was said, all who were gathered turned to the two new arrivals and thanked them for coming and speaking with them. They also asked the new arrivals to relay what they had heard here to their colleagues. The new arrivals said they intended to convince their colleagues of the truth that if we attribute all the goodness related to goodwill, and all the truth related to faith, to the Lord and none of it to ourselves, we are human and we become angels of heaven.